Partnering with the Cooperage Project — A Story about Helping Others
By Liam Macleod
#CampsDoGood
There’s a widespread saying in the summer camp world;
“The days are long but the weeks fly by”
What this means, is that during the summer camp months, when we’re so busy with camp counselors, campers and activities, time seamlessly flies by at breakneck speed. You hardly have a minute to yourself all summer and before you know it, the campers are gone.
Blink and you miss it.
It’s also a non-stop crazy roller coaster ride filled with emotions.
To many, this is similar to what the COVID-19 journey has felt like over the last few months, a non-stop crazy rollercoaster ride of emotions where the days are still long but the weeks are flying by.
Suddenly it’s gone from March to May.
The Camp IHC team has been at camp since March and so far it’s been a rollercoaster ride for us — one that’s been filled with highs and lows, twist and turns and certainly a couple of loop the loops!
Every day we watch the news, we speak to other camps, we connect with local health care workers, state officials and experts to try to build a picture of what lies ahead for summer camp. At times it has felt like Bill Murray’s classic Groundhog Day movie, where with each new day the narrative slightly changes but the same story goes on and repeats.
In April, as we continued searching for answers, hoping for clarity — we had to remind ourselves that there was still a world out there.
As a team up at camp, we understand that we are very lucky. We have food on our table, a large leadership team to spend quality time with and our beautiful summer camp facilities to enjoy. Even though we’re going through tough times, we still have plenty and it’s important to give back and to make a difference in the life of others.
After our first CampsDoGood challenge last week, we connected with two of our local summer staff, Nick & Vanessa Joyal who told us more about their involvement with The Cooperage Project.
The Cooperage Project was founded on the premise that strong communities are built upon strong relationships. Through a variety of programs, they inspire people of all ages to both embrace diversity and celebrate shared experience in order to create a deeper sense of community.
We couldn’t agree more!
Thanks to Nick & Vanessa we got in touch with The Cooperage Project to find out ways in which Camp IHC could help give back, whether it be through our time or other efforts.
After a discussion we agreed that a great way we could help them was to cook and provide dinner for 100 families once a week. Families that perhaps needed that little bit extra during these tougher times.
We got straight to it!
Our Leadership team got their masks and gloves on and headed to our camp kitchen to get down to business.
With bags of pasta, tubs of sauce and packets of cheese we got busy cooking up some good old summer camp Mac n’ Cheese.
Across the kitchen was the glorious smell of baking brownies.
After a short while the pasta was made and the brownies were perfected. We filled up 100 takeaway containers with Mac and Cheese and added the bags of brownies.
The next day our team delivered the food to the Cooperage to help feed the those that needed that extra helping hand.
We were amazed by the response and it’s inspiring us in our #CampsDoGood efforts. We look forward to making more meals for the Cooperage Project over the coming weeks.
As we said last week, no-one ever got poorer by giving back.
We would love to hear from the IHC Community about they have been doing to give back to others during COVID-19!
Stay safe.
We would like to recognize the Cooperage for all the hard work they are doing in the local community to help and inspire others.
